Prevent to remove powered ON VM replica from VBR console

[Sagindyk]

Hello,

Recently we did CRP (Contingency Recovery Plan) TEST for some critical IT services. One of VM Replica was Powered ON from VMware VCenter during 1 month in DR site.
After some period of time, there was initiated task to do housekeeping (cleanup) in VBR, and one of our engineers have been removed critical replica powered ON VM by mistake. After, we immediately restored VM form second replica to minimize downtime for the service.

However, our concern is there any option to add a new feature in VBR to somehow to prevent remove powered ON replica VM (alarm that replica VM is currently Powered ON)? For us it's critical update is necessary to exclude human errors in future.

[david.domask]

Hi Sagindyk, welcome to the forums.

Can you share a bit more on _how_ your colleague deleted the active replica from within Veeam? When a replica is in an "Active" state (i.e., Failover, Failback), the option to Delete from Disk is disabled within Veeam until the replica is no longer active. If you could share a bit more details on what your colleague did, it would be appreciated as within Veeam itself, there are already preventative measures in place to avoid this very scenario.

[Sagindyk]

Hi David,

The issues is that we powered ON replica VM in secondary Data Center outside of Veeam console (we didn't Failover or Failback options). I fully understand that we should follow existing solution Veeam solution to switchover VM replica. However, there might be various scenario when VBR unavailable or we want to enable script via Power Shell to remove replica VM once in 2 weeks to run Full replica.
Then, somehow we might face again issues like VM will be powered on outside VBR console, and script will delete Powered ON VM without any information alarm.
Our main target to exclude or minimize human errors.

Thank you in advance.

[david.domask]

Hi Sagindyk,

Thank you for the further explanation. We can consider the request sure, though as you noted, it is important to control the failover/failback process via Veeam to avoid not only this situation, but other issues which may complicate use of the replica and consolidating data between the replica and the production machine (i.e., manual failover would complicate failing back to production). That alone would minimize human errors, and having a standby Veeam server on your DR site that you can perform a Backup Configuration Restore to will also help with this workflow.

As for your script example, I would again suggest manage this via Veeam, as you can both check the status with Get-VBRReplica and passing the result to Get-VBRRestorePoint and checking the State property, and remove unneeded replicas with Remove-VBRReplica. In other words, I would suggest reviewing our Powershell guide and use our Powershell Forums to manage such things with Veeam directly to reduce the chance for human error.